


And the Deep Blue Sea

by Chex (provetheworst)



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Desert Island Fic, M/M, Mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 03:41:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provetheworst/pseuds/Chex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that Nick's been thrown overboard for siding with the captain during a mutiny, his only hope for survival lies with a complete flop of a mermaid whose idea of help is a bouquet of forks. At least Nick's got something pretty to look at before his inevitable demise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Deep Blue Sea

**Author's Note:**

> so a while back tumblr user hashtagaverage requested a gryles version of the little mermaid, and i don't like the little mermaid because i didn't want anyone to die and turn to seafoam, but i did draw [this thing](http://aflightygrim.tumblr.com/post/60138275453/i-started-trying-2-draw-something-then-i-realized). so. make of that what you will.  
> also props to tumblr user catchesterunited for huntin' down typos and guttin' em like fishes.

The ocean refuses to stop moving, no matter how much Nick wishes it would. The waves bothered him enough on the ship. On the tiny raft he's been cast off in, they're torture.

He has some water, a single oar, and no idea which way land might be, if land even exists anymore. He rather doubts it, considering how he hasn't seen any in nearly a month.

That fact is probably what caused the mutiny - their trip was only meant to take two weeks. Nick, idiot passenger that he was, decided trying to defend the captain was a good idea.

It was not a good idea. In fact, it was an awful idea: not only did he get to watch the captain get murdered before his eyes, but he was then almost immediately lowered down to this miserable little raft and got to see the ship sail away, sails big and bright against the clear blue sky.

It's been a day or so since that happened, and he wishes they could have given him one of the little boats or something, instead. Not that he would have been any better at handling it than the raft, but it would have been drier, at the least, and he'd be less worried about losing his water and meager food to a rogue wave.

Probably he'd be just as worried about the sharks, though.

A fin has broken water around him a few times now, and Nick has been at sea long enough - a whole month! - to know that some sharks like to jump in pursuit of their prey.

The sharks keep a cautious distance, though, and Nick gets back to trying to row, little good that it does against the ocean's might. He really does wish the ocean would just calm down for a bit and let him be on his way. He wouldn't even curse its name or throw up in it ever again, if it did, which is about all he can offer in the way of promises, seeing as he is utterly without money or weapons at the moment.

Nick misses his dagger. Not that he'd ever used it, but having it was sort of a comfort, made him feel like a very dashing and roguish seafaring type. His ignominious departure from the ship has reminded him that he is not that, at all. He's a miserable bastard stuck floating in the middle of the ocean wondering how to keep himself from dying.

There's something of a smudge on the horizon, either a cloud, a very large and very still whale, or an outcropping of rock that could charitably be called an island. Nick prays for the latter and starts trying to row.

Two hours later, and he's dragged his miserable little raft up onto the rocks with him. There's a sloping outcrop jutting up out of the water, rising to maybe six feet above the waves at its peak. A single, abandoned-looking bird nest sits atop the rock. Other than that, there are no features of note. Nick has maybe ten feet to wander in any given direction before falling back into the rolling sea.

He collapses on his back and stares up at the sky and starts debating whether it's worth trying to fashion a fishing rod out of a plank from the raft, some string from his shirt and - maybe a splinter. He can't think of any better hook. Nor can he think of any bait.

Nick watches the clouds and tries not to ruminate on just how thoroughly fucked he is, and fails miserably at the task.

He's definitely doomed. As doomed as a man can ever hope to be, really. He sits up for a moment, then stands, shading his eyes with one hand to peer about, hoping that perhaps he's missed a larger island somewhere nearby.

He has not.

He flops onto his stomach, this time, rests his head on his arms, and allows himself a pitiful moan. "All right, Grimshaw, pull yourself together. You've gotten yourself out of worse; you'll figure this out."

He hasn't, but the lie's a pleasant one. Certainly, he's avoided some sticky situations before, but those were a very terrestrial sort of sticky which didn't usually involve being stranded in the middle of the ocean. Mostly his troubles involved people after his money, or angry at him for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or else with knives. Lots of knives, in one case.

In any case, it’s all left him rather unprepared for his current plight. He bemoans his fate in private a while longer before falling asleep near the highest edge of the rock that can only fancifully be styled anything like an island.

-

He wakes up convinced the whole stranded-on-an-island thing was a dream, solely because he's woken up by a hand on his shoulder, a series of entirely-too-loud whistles, and then someone saying, "Good morning! What's your name?"

He convinces himself, very briefly, that he's found himself in some bloke's bed someplace - or the floor, more likely, with how hard the surface under him is. Maybe they'd both been highly intoxicated and forgotten each others’ names. That would be nice, compared to the awful dream he was having.

Then he opens his eyes and the sky is a washed-out, miserable color above him, and he's staring out at both the open ocean and a very strange-looking little fellow clinging to the edge of the rock he's lying on.

Nick jerks backward, finding himself much closer to the ocean than he was when he fell asleep, and the face vanishes below the edge of the rock.

He tries, for about two seconds, to convince himself that he's just hallucinating, but that doesn't work, either. 

The weird fellow in the water has swum around to rest his arms on the lower side of the rock, shifting a little with each motion of the waves around him. He has a very warm smile, if nothing else. His wiry little body is covered in tattoos - a pair of dolphins on his chest, some nails and a heart on his arms, a larger tattoo of a boat underneath the heart, and more indecipherable little ones that Nick doesn’t bother to identify.

He's also got a pair of seashells on his chest like a bizarre makeshift bra, despite having nothing in need of support. And these gashes in his neck that Nick first assumes are wounds and then realizes are probably gills. When gills became more likely than grievous injury, he doesn't want to know. He wishes he were looking at a ghost. At least that'd make sense, and probably not want to eat him.

The strange little fellow - the god damned mermaid, Nick corrects himself - has a grin that's much too toothy, and teeth that are much too pointy for comfort. Nick's heard things about mermaids, he has.

Things besides how they're not real. He's heard that a lot, but the sailors on the ship liked to tell stories as if they were, and Nick hadn't believed a word of it, yet here he is, and here the mermaid is, so. Possibly he was wrong on that front.

"D'you talk like this, then?" the mermaid asks, head cocked to one side, gills flaring uselessly in the air. He makes a weird whistling noise, then goes on, as if he hadn’t stopped for whatever that was “- keeps telling me humans haven't got language, but I said he was wrong. I don't like arguing with him, though. It's boring. You should let me know, just so I can go back and prove to him whether you do or not, though I suppose if you don't, then you wouldn't be able to tell me. But you not telling me's enough of an answer anyway, really, when you think about it. Humans are quite strange, aren't they?"

"I talk," Nick croaks, finally. His throat is a bit parched, and he reaches for his canteen, taking a small, careful sip. "If you're going to eat me, could you make it quick?"

"Why would I eat you?" it asks, narrowing its eyes. "Like, as revenge?"

"Revenge for what?"

"You're the ones who eat us," the mermaid says, slowly, sounding rather sad about the fact. 

"We do not! Or I don't, anyway. I've yet to meet anyone who's ever eaten a mermaid."

"A what?"

"You. You're a mermaid."

The mermaid peers down at itself. "That what you call us? Weird."

"What do you call yourself?"

The mermaid makes a weird, whistling, clicky noise, then grins again.

"Er. Right," Nick says. "I'm just going to call you lot mermaids, then. Easier for me. D'you have a name? And not a whistly one."

"Mm. No." The mermaid shrugs, then makes another whistly-noise, this one a bit different from the last. "That's my name. Why, what do you call yourself? Are you saying you use like - these sounds, this language, that's how you name yourself? How do you keep from having the same name as someone else?"

"Er, you don't, really." Nick can't believe he's having this conversation. The delirium theory seems more and more likely with each passing moment. Also, the sun's very hot. That might be contributing.

"Weird." The mermaid shakes its head. "That sounds really confusing, honestly."

"Well, I'm Nick," Nick says. "It's not like we only have ... one name. There's a lot of them, so you just sort of have to hope you don't meet too many people with the same one."

"But you still do! That's weird. So, like - you call yourself Nick, but there are other Nicks. That's really weird. I can't wait to tell my friends; this's brilliant. How many Nicks are there?"

"A lot. Look - can I call you Harry? That seems like a good name for a mermaid-y sort."

"Are there a lot of Harrys?" the mermaid asks, curious.

"Loads."

"I'll take it," Harry says, still cheery as ever. The way he bares his teeth when he smiles is gradually becoming less nerve-wracking, though Nick's definitely still on edge. "That way you can't find me again. Not that I don't want you to! But, I don't know, having someone know my name when I don't know theirs is a little weird. And you did tell me yours, but you said there's other Nicks, too, so I can't find you if I need to. So that's what's weird about it, really. Does that make sense?"

"Not at all."

"Sorry. Look, are you - are you lost? I've never seen a human here before. Did you drop something?"

"No. It's more like I got dropped." Nick pauses. "From a ship. I got thrown overboard."

"Oh! We're always finding things that come from ships." Harry pauses, making a face. "Sometimes it's dead people. You lot drop dead a lot, don't you? Very fragile. Seen a lot of you with big old cuts. Is it very dangerous, being on ships? I don't think I'd like it. You should learn to swim, I think. That'd be a lot better. Did you want me to introduce you to a whale? You could get a ride, probably, to wherever your ship was going."

"I don't know that I could hold on for long enough," Nick admits, however tempting the idea is. He also doesn't know how he'd sleep, or avoid drowning, but he avoids mentioning those facts.

"Shame." Harry sighs. "You ever been to a city?"

"Er - yes? I come from one, actually."

"I knew a dolphin who went to a city once," Harry says, excitedly. "D'you mind if I come up on your rock with you? Holding on's getting boring."

"Um." Nick looks about. There's room, he supposes. He scoots over a little, just in case, and Harry drags himself mostly out of the water. Now Nick can see, properly, the mermaid's tail - it's not as scaly or fishlike as he'’d imagined, but more smooth and rubbery like a porpoise.

Nick's only recently learned what porpoises are, but they're all right in his book. According to some of the sailors he'd been friendly with before they all at once decided to hate him, porpoises like to ride alongside ships, and will save folks that've been tossed overboard during storms. Quite friendly creatures, really.

So they'd said, anyway. So a porpoise-mermaid seems marginally less frightening than a fish one. Less smelly, as well. Nick hates the smell of fish, which is a poor opinion to hold on the high seas.

In any case, Harry lies back on the rock, arms behind his head, tail dangling in the water. He splashes his fin against the water a few times and then lets it hang. "I like this rock. Come here sometimes and sing, you know. I'm not going to stop just because you've set up residence."

"That's all right," Nick allows, hesitant. "As long as you don't kick me off."

"Nah. But - oh! I was telling you about that dolphin, right, so she went to this city, yeah, swam up the river where it was still holy anyway, and she tried to get a look around, but - bam!" Harry smacks his tail especially hard against the water to emphasize his point. "Someone tried to get her with a harpoon! Shouted something about sharks, apparently, but of course dolphins can't make the same sounds we do, right, so it wasn't like she could tell them better. Left straight away after that, though, so she didn't see much. The water was disgusting, though. You lot need to take better care of where you live. You're really quite a messy species in general, aren't you? It's a bit weird, I think. I don't know that I could be happy wallowing in my own filth and just - tossing rubbish everywhere."

"We're not that bad," Nick says. "There's just a lot of us. And a lot of rubbish. Gets a bit hard to figure out what to do with it all, and I suppose at sea - well, there's a lot of water. It's a very big place."

"Bothers us, though, it does," Harry says with a yawn, rolling onto his side. He makes a face. "Was hurting my fin lying like that. How do you stand it?"

"I haven't got a fin."

"Oh. Right. Yeah, that'd do it," Harry sighs. "You're the first human I've ever talked to. You're all right. I should get going, though, probably."

"Okay," Nick says, still rather blindsided by having a conversation with a mermaid in the first place.

"You need anything?"

"Um. Food 'n water would be nice."

Harry starts laughing, then stops at Nick's expression. "Wait, you're not having a go? There's water everywhere."

"It's salt water, though."

"Right," Harry agrees, slowly, sounding suspicious.

"I need fresh water," Nick tells him, carefully. "Like, without salt?"

Harry explodes into motion, diving off the rock, and Nick leans forward. The water's clear enough that he can see Harry swimming down, down, down, until it gets too murky and deep to really see. Also, Nick's nervous about leaning forward for so long - but Harry moves quickly, so. 

He sits back, shaking his head. Either Harry's going to fetch him some water or he's going to fetch a mermaid army to kill him. Nick can't think of any other options.

It's very quiet for a while, save for the constant sound of waves. Nick watches the sun move across the sky, shading his eyes with his hand. At least it isn't too hot out. He's almost comfortable, if thirsty.

He eyes his canteen, wondering how long he can stretch the water out, or if there's any way for him to sort of - make the seawater fresh. That's nonsense, though, and he sighs.

He's fucked.

-

Two days later, as Nick drinks the very last of his water, the mermaid pops his head up above the waves, and says, very warily, "Are you sure you're a human?"

"Yes."

"Not a demon or anything?"

"No!" Nick laughs, voice a bit rough with disuse and dryness. "No, I swear. Why would I be a demon? If I was a demon, I don't think I'd be sitting here waiting to die."

"Waiting?" Harry asks, curious. "If you're trying to die, there's quicker ways than sitting on a rock."

"I'm not trying to. I'm just going to."

"Oh. That's too bad. Especially if you're not a demon," Harry says. "I think - you said you need ..."

Harry stops talking for a long enough time that Nick says, "Food? Water?"

"The second," Harry says. He swims closer, hanging off the edge of the rock again, and beckons Nick closer until Nick leans in and Harry presses his mouth to Nick's ear to whisper, "Saltless water."

"Er, yes. Is there something wrong with -"

Harry splashes away again, but this time he's back within a minute, looking sheepish. "Well, salt water's holy, right, and we die in water without it - very slowly, very unpleasantly, I promise - so it's - not very safe, really. Not something you go talking about lightly."

"Oh. Well - sorry. I happen to need it to live, so."

"I think ... let me ask mum something," Harry says, holding up a hand. "Can you wait here?"

Nick raises his eyebrows.

Harry grins, sheepish, and says, "Right, right, okay, just you wait. Just you wait!" and swims off again.

Nick wonders where, exactly, he went so wrong in life, that he's spending his last moments being confused by a needlessly-pretty young mermaid. Nick assumes that Harry is young, anyway, though mermaids could just as easily be ageless creatures, unmarred by the course of time. Possible, but hopefully not likely. Nick doesn't want to live in a world where something that pretty can last, mostly for selfish reasons, because he's very, very well aware of his own mortality right now, stranded as he is on a little rock in the middle of the ocean.

Even if he had fresh water and food, he'd still be stuck on a tiny rock, and liable to get swept to sea as soon as a storm hit. That puts the fear of the sky in him, and he looks up quickly, but there's nothing more than a few fluffy white clouds.

They look menacing, though. Their fluffiness could turn quickly, Nick knows, or more of them could appear up there in the sky to gang up on him - and now he's attributing malice to the damned clouds. By this point he's feeling a touch delirious, and it's letting these tangential spirals of terrible, troubling thoughts take hold far too easily.

Nick was going across the ocean for his very first speaking engagement abroad. It was going to be lovely - he'd talk to people about art and beauty and music, and they'd listen to him go on for an hour or so, and pay him for the pleasure of it. There were flyers made up to announce his arrival and everything, with some pictures of him that look quite nice, in Nick's estimation. The artist who'd designed the print was very talented - the lad was quite talented in bed, too.

That depresses Nick, too, because he's never again going to get to sleep with any young, stupidly pretty boys five or ten years his junior, and that's a damned tragedy. Nick has so much to offer, after all - mostly money, liquor and opium, but those are all worthwhile trade goods. He wishes he had some opium right now, honestly.

Usually he doesn't touch the stuff - he's seen what it does to people who partake too often - but now, as he lies waiting to die, he thinks a bit of mindless oblivion chasing dreams'd be a nice change of pace, help save him from his racing thoughts.

Just as he's worked himself into a proper fit of despair, Harry shimmies his way up onto the rock next to him, holding himself up on his arms and watching Nick with narrow eyes.

Nick looks at him, sighs, and closes his eyes. "I'm going to die. Never mind. Just go, it's fine, whatever you went to ask, I don't care anymore. I'm doomed, young mermaid. Merman. Merperson. Thing. You're not really a mermaid if you've not got the -maid part down, are you? That's a bit awkward, I suppose."

"Are you about to die right now?" Harry asks, wide-eyed.

"Well. Soon enough. In a day or two, I imagine."

"Oh. But not in the next few minutes. That's good, then," Harry says, before leaning down and smashing his face into Nick's.

Nick sputters, but Harry's got a hand in his hair and is pressing their mouths together and Nick realizes, rather belatedly, that Harry is kissing him, has crawled to lie half on top of him, the press of his lips hot and insistent against Nick's own. Nick opens his mouth, maybe to protest, maybe to play along, and Harry takes it as encouragement.

Harry tastes like sea-salt and ocean, and when Nick clasps a hand around the back of Harry's neck his fingers curl over part of Harry's gills, which he can feel working in unfamiliar ways against his touch. Harry shivers, huffing a laugh into his mouth, and bites down hard on Nick's lip until Nick tastes the copper of his own blood.

Then Harry draws away, just enough that Nick's left confused, eyes darting down unconsciously to Harry's mouth. Harry's got his own lower lip between his teeth, which looks at first like a sheepish, shy bit of expression before Nick notes again the determination in Harry's eyes and sees the glint of blood under those too-sharp, too-bright and too-many teeth of his. Then Harry's mouth is back against his.

His blood tastes like the ocean, too, saltier than Nick's own, cold and strange and less coppery. Though Nick's no connoisseur of the taste of blood, he knows Harry's is different, and he can feel it sting against the cut on his own lip.

That's probably important, he thinks, dimly, but making out with Harry's quite nice, even if Harry is a damned mermaid. Nick will take what he can get. It's not like he's going to survive this, and Harry's quite funny and interesting, anyway, not that any of Nick's friends would ever accept that as a valid excuse.

To hell with all of them, Nick thinks, letting his hands wander down Harry's sides, freezing briefly when he remembers that, just below the waste, Harry's a damned fish. Porpoise. Thing.

To hell with it, he thinks again. If he's going to die, he'll do it having kissed a damned mermaid, and that's got to be worth something in the long run even if no one ever hears of it.

"That should do it," Harry says some minutes later, letting himself slide back off the rock. He dives down, jumps out of the water, then swims an entirely-too-fast lap around the rock before letting himself bob in the water just in front of where Nick is now sitting utterly dazed. "Sacred blood for sacred water 'n all that. I asked my sister if she thought it'd work, and she said yeah. Try and drink."

"What?" Nick says, dumbly.

"What'd you think that was all about?"

"I don't - you couldn't resist my incredibly dashing human charms?"

Harry starts laughing, which makes Nick scowl deeply. "Humans are strange. No! I just didn't want you to die."

"That how you kiss everyone who's about to die?"

"No," Harry says, slow and amused. "But I like you, and you were, you know, in need of fixing, so I fixed you."

"Fixed me by bloody making out with me."

"Comingling of blood," Harry says, flippant, tossing his hair back, managing to dislodge the starfish clinging to his temple in the process. He notices this belatedly, as the little think starts to sink like a stone, and chases after it before coming back. "Sorry, sorry. Yeah, though. You said you were thirsty, so go on, then."

Nick figures he's going to die anyway, so he may as well, scooping some water into his hand and tipping it into his mouth, and - the seawater tastes the same as ever, honestly, which should mean goddamn terrible. Nothing about it's changed, but it's not so bad anymore. 

So now it's going to take him a few days longer to die. It's not as big a relief as it should be.

-

Harry comes back the next morning with a bouquet of forks. That's the only word for it. Nick stares, bewildered, at the proffered handful of metal, wrapped up with a neatly-tied bow of seaweed, and eventually realizes he's meant to take it.

"To keep you safe," Harry says, earnestly.

"Forks."

Harry's entire demeanor brightens, expression too sunny to be real. "Is that what they're called?"

"Yeah. I don't know what you want me to do with them."

"Put 'em in your hair to protect yourself from birds?" Harry offers. "Fight off mice?"

"Do you see birds or mice here?" is Nick's first question, followed by a hasty, choked out, "What?"

"My friend told me about birds. And - my other friend told me about mice. God, talking like this's awful, I don't know how you get by. You can't even signify who anybody is, except with names that apparently everybody's got. Get your act together. Can you like, when you get home, can you tell the rest of the humans to stop being so silly?"

Nick groans. “I’m not getting home. I don’t have a way there that doesn’t involve drowning.”

“How would you drown?” Harry asks, baffled. “That was the whole point of the blood thing! So you can drink and not die.”

“I feel like I’m repeating myself, but - what?” Nick shakes his head. “No, never mind, of course I can breathe water now. Great, that’s just - fantastic.”

Harry beams. “You want to go find dinner with me? Saw a whole school of sardines not long ago.”

“I can’t swim that well, even if I’m not going to drown.”

“Oh. Fair point. I’ll bring some back,” Harry says, and vanishes again. He seems less than focused, always wandering off and getting very, very easily distracted. Nick wonders if that’s a cultural thing, or a species thing, or just Harry. He likes to imagine it’s just Harry.

Sitting around in damp clothes is getting old. Also, a bit chilly, even with the sun out, so Nick finally relents and gets his kit off, laying it out as best he can on the rocks in the hopes the sun’ll dry it before the surf gets it wet again.

The two forces can battle it out, and Nick can sunbathe, get a nice bit of a tan going. That’s as productive a use of his time as any, right now. He considers the shoddy wooden raft he’s got up on the raft with him, which he’s been sleeping on at night - possibly not the best idea, since the raft’s more likely to get washed away than the rock itself - and thinks about taking up Harry’s offer and hitching a ride on a whale.

Maybe they could rig up some sort of seaweed harness or something, get a whale to bloody pull the raft all the way to shore, or as near to shore as a whale can get without beaching. Nick wouldn’t want some random whale killing itself on his behalf, and when they’re that close he could probably just swim.

Nick isn’t a strong swimmer, exactly, but he can take care of himself at the beach and keep himself from drowning most of the time. He has yet to drown even once, which he thinks says a lot.

Harry doesn’t turn up again until the next morning, when the sun’s already been up for a bit. “Oh,” he says, floating in the water in front of Nick and clutching a small swordfish in his arms. “You look weird without clothes. Can I touch your legs?”

“Er,” Nick says.

“I didn’t know that’s how they looked under there,” Harry says, tossing the dead swordfish up onto the rock then pulling himself up just enough so he can get one of Nick’s feet in his hand, looking over it intently. “Look at those! Little foot-fingers. Amazing. Are those toes, or do you call them something different?”

“No, they’re toes,” Nick says. He coughs. “Thanks for the fish? Do you have, ah, some way to - oh god.” He starts laughing, jerking his foot away.

“Are you all right? Are you ticklish? That seems dangerous. That’s what the … shoes … are for? Shoes? Shows.”

“Shoes.” Nick nods slowly. “You got it right the first time. But look, is there a way to cook the fish, do you think?”

“What’s cook?”

“Heating food up so it’s … cooked.”

“You cook something to cook it.” Harry’s brow furrows, puzzled. He shimmies further up the rock, running his hands up Nick’s leg as he does, ruffling the hair a little. “I like your legs. They’re quite nice.”

“Cheers.”

“I’ve only met one other person with legs,” Harry says, thoughtful. “And they were quite different from yours.”

“I thought I was your first human?”

“Well, yeah, I said person. Not human.” Harry grins. “He was a mean old crocodile. Not sure about them, really, he said he sometimes swims in unholy waters, but here he was, safe and sound. Anyway, his legs were a lot shorter than yours. Bigger claws, too. Your claws are a bit on the pitiful side.”

“They’re not really claws,” Nick says, wiggling his toes and staring down at his toenails in consternation. They haven’t grown out that much.

“Much less pointy,” Harry says, agreeably. “Are you going to eat your swordfish?”

“I mentioned cooking. I don’t know if I should just … eat it raw,” Nick says, put off by the mere idea. He’s heard of people who eat raw fish, sliced thin and put on top of rice or something, but even that seems a bit weird. Just going to town on a raw fish without even any rice to let him pretend it’s a real dish is weirder. 

“Mm.” Harry nods, thoughtful, then says, “Your teeth are really flat.”

“Yes.”

“Do you eat meat?”

“Er - yeah.”

Harry considers Nick’s face for an uncomfortably long time, but Nick refuses to look away as Harry stares him down. Finally, Harry comes up with a question. “How?”

“You’re asking how I eat meat?” Nick stares. “Well, we usually … cut it up first. Eat little pieces.”

“Oh.” Harry nods. “That’s all right, then.”

Nick stares at Harry, then at the dead swordfish. “All right. All right, Nick, you can do this.”

“I’m not Nick,” Harry says. “Unless you’ve decided I should be another Nick? Did I do something to turn into one?”

“No, you can still be Harry,” Nick reassures him. “Never fear.”

“I still fear sometimes,” Harry says, sadly. “But I won’t fear you changing my name. Oh, that reminds me, though, I was thinking, right, like I keep telling my friends about you, and some of them’ve come by to watch you sleep, but I said they should leave you alone because you’re a very nervous sort, and anyway, I can’t really call you Nick underwater, if you know what I mean. It doesn’t carry right, and anyway, it’s not a proper name. I can’t just say Nick, not if there’s more than one of you, so like I need a name for you in particular.”

“Right,” Nick says, prodding at the swordfish’s still-wet skin with one finger, then recoiling. “Well, my full name’s Nick Grimshaw -”

“That doesn’t work either,” Harry says. “But I was trying to come up with a name for you, right.”

“All right.”

“So I sort of thought,” Harry says, and does the whistly-clicky thing again. “Something like that?”

“Uh-huh.” Nick pauses. “Does it mean anything?”

“Oh, right! Sorry, I forgot, you’re not really civilized, are you. You only just got purified.” Harry shakes his head. “Sorry, that was rude. Sorry, sorry. It’s sort of like - well, it’s kind of along the lines of, ‘the human with the face that makes ten thousand small cuts on your heart.’”

“Jesus!” Nick barks out, laughing hard enough that he ends up out of breath and bent over double. “What the fuck kind of name is that? Bloody hell, I sound like a monster.”

“It’s because you’re pretty!” Harry says, genuinely distraught, talking quicker and more emotively than usual. “It’s like, a descriptor, sort of.”

“So wait, does everyone’s name mean things like that? All you lot?” Nick considers this. “You were complaining about how you can’t talk about your friends as anything but, like, ‘your friend,’ right, so why not just … translate?”

“It seems a bit insulting,” Harry says. “Not using their names right. I could do, I guess.”

“Like, all right, your best friend, what’s his name?”

“Unbeatable Savings,” Harry says.

Nick manages to fall off the rock entirely, he’s laughing so hard. Before he can get himself back to the surface, Harry’s got him, holding on tight under his arms and bringing him above water.

“You all right?” Harry asks, unsure.

“It was just - really funny,” Nick says, giggling again despite himself. “Unbeatable Savings, fuck. What’s your name?”

“The one with the bad jokes and long stories,” Harry says.

Nick thinks it’s entirely possible he’s going to die laughing. That wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, compared to drowning or getting swept away in a storm and eaten by sharks. Laughter, at least, is fun.

“Heeeeeyy.”

“Sorry,” Nick says. “Sorry, that’s just - the greatest name I’ve ever heard.”

Harry’s eyebrows do a strange thing, all dubious and confused. “Thanks?”

“You’re welcome,” Nick says. “Now. I’m going to - try and eat this swordfish.”

“All right,” Harry says, with a slow, sweet little smile. “I’m going to go for a few days. Probably two or three. There’s enough meat on that, you should be all right.”

“Where are you going?”

“Byyyye,” Harry says, waving and ignoring the question.

-

It goes badly. At least he’s not hungry, despite all the blood.

-

Three days later, Harry says, “All right, I’ve got a way to get you home!”

“Oh, thank god.”

“I’m going to pull your raft,” Harry declares, sounding quite smug. “Unbeatable savings and the one whose eyelashes could drown a shark are going to help.”

“Oh, fantastic. Eyelashes that could drown a shark. That one sounds just - indispensable, really; I always think eyelashes when I think of strong swimmers.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Oh. I might have believed you, actually. I always thought humans were sort of weird, right, but you’re - definitely weird, I’ve got … new reasons to think that, I guess, but you’re all right, you’re a good weird. You look much better close up.” Harry seems very thoughtful. “And I like your legs. They’re well-proportioned, honestly. I like that.”

“Of course you do,” Nick says.

“And you’re not a bad kisser,” Harry says, with a toothy little grin, face going an interesting shade of red before he swims off, vanishing under the water with a speed that would be astonishing if Nick hadn’t seen him do it so many times already.

-

Just as Harry promises, two of his friends turn up - Unbeatable Savings, who’s smaller and scrappy-looking, covered in what look like scars from sharkbites and squid, has a tail that’s a plain grey like Harry’s. The one with the eyelashes has a darker tail, covered in a smattering of white spots.

Nick decides he likes that one better right off the bat.

The trip, like Harry promised, takes several days. He gets ignored most of the time, as the mermaids busy themselves with actually rescuing him, not assuaging his lonely ego.

It’s strange, but he’s almost sad this bizarre episode of his life is nearly over. Much as he feared facing death, he did sort of like talking to Harry, which is a stupid thing to be sad about. He also rather fancied kissing Harry, which is stupider.

Nick allows himself to ponder whether or not mermaids even know what kissing is, or if that was just a ritual, but he thinks they must, with the way Harry reacted. Unless NIck’s jumping to conclusions without enough information, which is entirely possible.

He should probably try kissing Harry again, he thinks, sighing wistfully. That’ll never happen.

That gets his thoughts wandering down an even worse path, which is sex with Harry, which - probably isn’t possible, if he’s honest. He’s not even sure Harry’s got a cock, let alone what such a thing might look like. The dolphin tail’s a bit confusing.

He doubts Harry could suck him off, either, not with those teeth, so the entirety of their relationship would be reduced to handjobs. From Harry.

Nick could go for that, actually. He’d be all right getting a handjob from a mermaid; it’d be a story to tell later, at the very least. Normally he tries not to kiss and tell, but Harry is literally a mermaid, and he thinks it’d be all right, seeing how most folks don’t get to meet any mermaids at all. It’s not like it’s going to get back to Harry that Nick’s been a bit of a gossip.

Land comes into sight during late afternoon of the third day, and they reach shore within a few hours, just as the sun is setting.

“Sorry we didn’t get to talk more,” the one with the eyelashes says, sounding genuinely regretful about it.

“Good luck, mate,” Unbeatable Savings says, waving. “Take good care of the one with the bad jokes and long stories.”

“Wait, what?” Nick asks, but those two’ve unhitched themselves from the seaweed harness system they were using to drag the raft, and they swim off. “Wait! That’s - you’re still here.”

“Hiya,” Harry says, agreeable. “I hope we’re not far from where you wanted to be.”

“I have no idea where we are.”

“Oh. That’s too bad,” Harry says. He pushes the raft a bit further, until Nick gets the bright idea to actually get off, proper land under his feet for the first time in ages. The rock doesn’t really count, he doesn’t think.

Harry still doesn’t leave, though he looks impossibly nervous now.

“Why?” Nick asks.

“Well, to get there, we’ll probably have to walk,” Harry says. “I don’t think I’ll be very good at that.”

“Not with the tail,” Nick says, then, belatedly, “You can’t walk.”

“Well.”

Harry pulls himself up out of the water, and things get a bit hazy and confused for a moment - Nick tries to look, but finds himself quite unable to. One moment, Harry’s got his tail, and then instead he has legs, with Nick none the wiser as to how in the hell that happened.

Nick throws up his hands. “Right, of course! Legs! Perfect, that makes sense. Mermaids with legs, why not.”

“I hoped it wouldn’t work,” Harry says. He tries to stand up, falls down, then tries again, teetering upright and wobbling on his feet once he’s there. He windmills his arms, trying desperately to keep some measure of balance.

“All right.” Nick takes pity on him, stepping in to Harry’s side and getting one of Harry’s arms around his shoulders. “No, come on, just lean on - there we are, brilliant. Now tell me why you’ve got legs you don’t want?”

“I can still, like, it’s not permanent, exactly,” Harry says, looking out to sea. “But after the trial, right, they said I had to go, so here I am.”

“The trial.”

“Well, because like - I gave you some of my blood, yeah, but you gave me some of yours, too, and I wasn’t thinking about that part, but that’s like, left me tainted, right, so I have to go. Year and a day at the minimum.”

“Aha,” Nick says. “Right. That sounds reasonable.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, leaning heavily against Nick. “It is, just - I don’t like it.”

“That was sarcasm,” Nick says. “The part about it being reasonable?”

“Oh.”

“Well, then! That’s - well.” He considers this for a while, quiet, and not even sure which direction to go. He thinks north, maybe. North sounds right. Looking down, he realizes something, and, without thinking, says, “Oh, you do have a penis.”

Harry looks down too. “Yes. It’s on the outside! Weird. I never saw yours; is yours outside, too?”

“Yeah, it’s sort of traditional.”

“Weird.” When Harry smiles, his teeth aren’t half as flat as Nick might have hoped. No one’s perfect, though.

Nick coughs, turning away and looking pointedly at the sky. “We shouldn’t go too far tonight. It’s a bit late to travel, yeah? But tomorrow morning, we’ll make sure your legs are working, all that.”

“Right, thanks. Maybe it’ll be easier after I sleep.” Harry still looks puzzled by his feet, and everything about being upright - moving one foot in front of the other is still a bit advanced for him, and it’s only because of Nick that he hasn’t fallen yet again. “You think?”

“We’ll have lessons. I’ll teach you; if you can swim, you can walk.”

“I don’t know how to swim with legs, though. I’ve normally got a tail for that.”

“Right.” Nick nods. “Right, of course. Well - it’s all coordination. God, we’re going to need to think up a reason for you not to have any clothes, too.”

“Does everyone wear clothes?” Harry asks, brow creased again. Nick wants to kiss the confusion right off his face, but doesn’t, in a remarkable act of self-restraint. “Like, all the time? Really?”

“At least when you’re outside,” Nick says, amused.

“Even if it’s hot out?”

“Yeah. I’m not the one who made the rules.”

“Whoever thought of that seems very shellfish.”

Nick starts laughing. “Is that what you’re doing now? Making fish puns?”

“Shellfish aren’t actually fish,” Harry says. “I thought it might be funny. You laughed; it was funny, right?”

“It was pure rubbish,” Nick says. “Maybe if you get rid of the seashells, we can make out like we were robbed. And you’re weak because the attackers poisoned you, that’s why you can’t walk.”

“Wait, so we’re lying to people we’ve not even met yet, is that the plan?”

“Basically.”

Harry looks very thoughtful, then smiles again. “All right.”

-

Mid-morning the next day, when they’ve been making their very, very slow way along a seaside road, a carriage passes by, slows up, then stops entirely.

“You all right there?” the driver asks, brandishing a crossbow.

“We got robbed,” Nick says.

“How do I know you’re not robbers yourself?”

Nick looks at Harry, then back at the driver. “You see a lot of naked robbers in these parts?”

“Seen it done,” the driver agrees, gruffly, the crossbow trained somewhere right between NIck’s eyes, probably.

Harry leans over, whispering to Nick, “Is that thing bad? Why’s he pointing it at you?”

Nick groans, then puts on his best placating smile because the driver of the carriage is looking twitchy. Nick holds his hands up. “You can search me, if you want; I don’t mind.”

“I’d say we need to search the other one, too, but …” The driver trails off, shaking his head, then commences with checking Nick’s every pocket and seam for hidden surprises.

Ten minutes later, they’re seated on the back of a carriage bound for a city Nick’s never heard of.

He’s about to complain about this when Harry leans over and kisses him, and he decides that things really could be worse.


End file.
